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Wednesday, January 4, 2017

As a nod to the upcoming inauguration of the new POTUS and his Alt-right supporters here are ten fascists, er, Falangists from the Spanish Civil War, wearing their distinctive blue shirts, tasseled gorrillo side caps and khaki jodhpurs all fighting hard to 'Make Spain Great Again'.

The Falange was a Spanish right-wing political movement that rose to prominence during the Spanish Civil War. They were fervent supporters of General Franco in his bid to wrest control of Spain from it's Republican government.

The Falange was an organization built around strict authoritarian ideals, believing the nation state should have close control over all aspects of Spanish society. They were patriarchal monarchists who were anti-communist, anti-liberal, anti-intellectual and ant-capitalist (although they smartened up with this last one, quickly seeing the realities of competing in a world market). Yeah, these guys were real forward thinkers, but hey, they had sharp uniforms and won the war, so they couldn't have been all that bad, right? Riiight.

After the Civil War the Falange became a significant political force during the 1940s, extending later into the postwar period. Nonetheless, they began to steadily lose influence as Spain had to adapt to an increasingly secular, technological world. Upon Franco's death in 1975, the Falange broke up into a number of splinter groups, each politically negligible, each bickering with the others to (get this) claim the name of 'Falange'. Today the descendants and supporters of these d-bags can sometimes be seen giving Nazi salutes at their pathetic rallies and generally being useless wastes of skin. But I digress.

These 28mm figures are from the comprehensive Empress Miniatures range. Wonderful sculpts from the very talented Paul Hicks. The flag is (I think) from Flags of War.